ABSTRACT

AbstractA 43-years old woman had 12 years with pain in the left thorax and a supposedly cardiomegaly. Six years later, a lateral chest x-rays film showed a retropericardiac mass, which in the computed tomograph extended from anterior and superior mediastinum to behind the pericardium, overpassing the left border of the heart. A needle biopsy obtained lymphomatous material that was diagnosed as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She received four chemotherapy cycles and 27 radiation sessions. When she was seen at our hospital, the mediastinal mass persisted without changes. During an open thoracotomy we found that the mass was devoid of fixation to mediastinal structures, and once resected it was diagnosed as a thymolipoma.

KEYWORDS

Thymolipoma, mediastinal mass, thymoma.

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